MEDICINE - 20th century medicine

Question 1

What nickname was given to certain chemical compounds that could destroy a specific infection but leave the rest of the body unharmed?

Answer 1

Magic Bullets

Question 2

Salvarsan 606, finally developed in 1909, was the first chemical compound created to cure which medical infection?

Answer 2

Syphilis

In 1909, a Japanese scientist named Hata assisted German scientist Paul Ehrlich by discovering that the 606th chemical compound that his team had tested did in fact cure syphilis

Question 3

Prontosil, known as the ‘second magic bullet’, was developed in 1932 by which German scientist?

Answer 3

Gerhard Domagk.

He discovered that a bright red dye called Prontosil stopped the spread of infections in mice. He was forced to test Prontosil on his own daughter, who had developed blood poisoning and it cured her

Question 4

. In 1928, purely by chance, British doctor Alexander Fleming noticed that which significant bacterial infection had been killed off by a mould in one of his petri dishes?

Answer 4

Staphylococcus

This was particularly harmful as it caused a wide variety of infections.

Question 5

How much money did the British Government give these two to support further research in developing penicillin?

Answer 5

£25

Question 6

By 1941 penicillin had been used for the first time on a human, policeman Albert Alexander, who was suffering with septicaemia, fatal blood poisoning. Why did Alexander eventually die?

Answer 6

Supplies of penicillin ran out.

but this still represented a major breakthrough as penicillin had been curing him of the infection.

Question 7

Fleming’s work was restarted in 1940 by two scientists working at Oxford University Medical School. Who were they?

Answer 7

Howard Florey and Ernst Chain

Florey was an Australian pathologist and Chain a German biochemist.